1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to integrated software development environments, and in particular to collecting, processing, and displaying remote object status data within a local software development environment. More particularly, the present invention relates to a system and method employing object monitoring and monitoring adapter features for enabling access to remote object status data utilized during software design and development.
2. Description of the Related Art
A prominent approach to managing the complexity of modem software development is the use of an Integrated Development Environment (IDE). IDEs typically support various on-line help mechanisms allowing, for example, a developer to reference on-line documentation describing various function definitions. Furthermore, for program development of a distributed application, it is important that information about remote objects be available to the developer. Remote objects are applications that do not reside on the computer executing the application code. These objects are able to be requested by the program using techniques such as a Remote Procedure Call (RPC). For example, the Java Remote Method Invocation (RMI) is a type of access to remote objects that a programmer, using the Java programming language, employs to access objects on different platforms over a distributed network.
Remote objects are often developed in a source language different than that of the accessing application. In addition, the remote objects may operate in an operating system environment different from the operating system environment of the accessing application. An Object Request Broker (ORB) architecture is used in such situations to enable local/client objects to access and use remote/server objects. An Interface Definition Language (IDL) defines the interfaces to the remote objects that the respective applications must use to access ORB services. An “object broker” then manages the communication between object-oriented client programs and remote object services, enabling a program or object written in one language to communicate with a remote object written in another language. There are a number of interface definition languages including the Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) IDL and the Web Services Descriptor Language (WSDL) IDL. The present invention is not limited to a particular IDL. An IDL is used by a client program through “stub” interfacing. The IDL is interpreted by an “IDL compiler” to generate program stubs in the programming language of the client program. When utilized in RMI, a stub program residing on the client side appears to the local calling program to be the remote object being called to provide a service.
Several problems relating to IDE software development have remained unaddressed. As explained above, IDE remote program interface mechanisms enable a local IDE project to incorporate remote programming resources (referred to herein generically as “remote objects”) such as Web services into a given software project. These mechanisms are typically realized using an ORB architecture employing IDLs whereby program stubs are generated on the local platform and consequently may be used as a resource conduit to access remote resources during program runtime. However, many characteristics of the remote objects remain unknown to the local developer until the objects are accessed and retrieved using the foregoing ORB/IDL mechanisms. Systems and methods are known for monitoring and collecting data relating to performance, availability and other status indicia of object-oriented program resources. However, present distributed computing architectures do not include means by which such object status data may be utilized in order to increase remote object status transparency for an IDE software development environment.
From the foregoing, it can be appreciated that a need exists for an improved method and system for incorporating remote object status monitoring into the software design and development phases within an IDE. The present invention addresses this and other needs unresolved by the prior art.